Full day of work today, from 8.30am to 4.30pm. I say ‘work’, but it was more like hanging out with friends. CILASS friends.
Today was the 2nd CILASS Inquiry Based Learning Staff-Student Symposium. Some people may remember me talking about giving a presentation via Skype from Tokyo at last year’s event – well, this time around I was able to eat the free lunch as well.
I won’t go into details here as I’ll be blogging about it on the CILASS blog and will link to it. But I would like to share a few photos of the day.
Student Ambassadors modelling sexy CILASS T-Shirts
Got to the IC at 8.30am to blow up helium balloons with Barbara – that was FUN!
Laura, student ambassador co-ordinator and all-round wonderwoman was also on the scene to wake us with that smile of hers
Next, I moved to my station in CILASS 3, armed with Macbook and a VAIO to co-ordinate live blogging (limited success, I wasn’t forthright enough) and the uploading of photos taken at the event – the idea was to see how quickly I could get photos from the symposium sessions onto flickr & tagged in order that they automatically display on all the screens in the place (its things like this that give me insane amounts of pleasure). Got about 250 photos up by the end of the day.
It was whilst sorting out the tags and things that Barbara and I came up with a stunning idea, inspired by thinking of those tourist spots where you stick your head through the holes in the big wooden signboards and have your photo taken so it’s your face with some famous person’s body. Well take that concept, and cross it with Disneyland, and throw in some tools for Inquiry Based Learning, thus creating an ‘IBL Land’ – albeit a bit smaller (i.e. as small as the glass-walled CILASS 1, which is about 2 metres by 3 metres in size).
Yes, this was a fantastic idea! We kitted out the room with an assortment of Sony VAIOs, Toshiba Tablet PCs, a white board and a big collection of impressive-looking books from the nearby shelves, all promoting the theme of Inquiry Based Learning.
Then, we put a sign up outside: “Come and get your IBL Photo taken here today!”
Students, “Doing IBL”
At one point I was dared to ask the Pro-Vice Chancellor (who was visiting for prize-giving) to come and have his photo taken in our IBL land – I did – and got the shot (although not realising how silly I am he was a little bemused at first).
Speaking of the Pro-Vice Chancellor and prize giving: I mentioned the other day that myself and my classmates had successfully nominated our tutor for a £2000 prize in recognition of all her amazing work in promoting IBL – today was the day that she was to accept the award. However, at the last minute, I realised that she wasn’t there …I gave her a call, and was told that she couldn’t make it because she was in class – would I accept it on her behalf?
Later on, I presented her with the big bunch of flowers and award certificate: no doubt receiving them from me was almost as exciting for her as receiving them from the Pro-Vice Chancellor!
I’m so happy that she won. She really deserves it. In a way, I like to think of it as a thank you from all of us in our final year for all the work she’s put in these last few years to teach us Japanese. (She’s so modest though. When I took the flowers to her office it turned out that two of her closet colleagues didn’t even know about it!).
I’m comforted though in knowing that it isn’t really the ‘end’ of any relationships. If I Look back over the past 12 years at the various places I’ve lived and the stages I’ve been through, all of those places and stages are still very much a part of my life, In this era of email, Skype & online social networks, it’s not easy to lose contact. Classmates, CILASS colleagues, tutors & other friends – all these people won’t suddenly dissapear from my life the moment I leave uni.
In a way, with regards to my language teachers this could be thought of as just the beginning. As my language develops during my time in Japan, so I’ll be more inclined to contact them. That was one thing I enjoyed towards the end of last year, ‘calling home’ to Sheffield from Tokyo several times to catch up on the latest departmental news.
Ho hum.
I have about 13 days to finish my dissertation. I’ll spend much of this weekend offline writing that. If you’ve sent me an email recently, thank you, I’ll be in touch. Have a bit of a backlog at the mo.
night night xxx